Juneau (Alaska):
Sarah Palin is long gone from this capital, what with the new ranch in Arizona and the is-she-running-or-not bus blitz of American heritage landmarks Outside, as Alaskans like to call the lower 48 states.
Yet nearly two years after she resigned as governor and nearly three since Senator John McCain chose her as his running mate, Ms. Palin is steering still another wave of national news media attention toward Juneau. On Friday, more than 24,000 pages of e-mails Ms. Palin sent as governor, mostly using private accounts, are to be released in response to public records requests first made in 2008.
After all the delay -- and after Ms. Palin's past and personal life have since been scoured in depth by news outlets (and exposed through leaked e-mails, investigative reports and tell-all books) -- the relevance of the e-mails and what they might reveal is unclear. But that has not diminished many efforts to obtain them, or the challenge of digesting what the Alaska official in charge of their release suggested in an interview would be "six boxes now, not five" of hard-copy documents.
The news media have descended here en masse to sift through the trove, with many organizations sending teams of reporters and database specialists to comb the documents and post them online. All that effort for a cache whose contents remain unknown -- as do Ms. Palin's presidential aspirations -- was testament to her singular ability to command attention.
Even as Ms. Palin orchestrates much of her communication through digital media -- one moment she tweaks President Obama via Twitter, then she elaborates on Facebook, all from wherever she might be at that moment -- her old e-mails are being released by the pound, not the pixel, in six boxes, a total of about 250 pounds at a printing cost of $725 per set. And at least initially, the documents can be had only by either picking them up here, in remote Juneau -- a city accessible only by plane or boat -- or having them shipped, at considerable cost, to newsrooms across the country.
In addition, more than 2,000 pages of the e-mails have been withheld for various reasons, including executive privilege and privacy, according to Gov. Sean Parnell's office. Details in many of the documents that are being released have been redacted by state lawyers.
"Why has your staff only implemented taxing ways to disclose these (redacted) public documents? What about scanning them?" Andree McLeod, a critic of Ms. Palin who was among those who pushed for the release, wrote to Mr. Parnell recently. In an interview here, Ms. McLeod, who had been among the most active in filing complaints against Ms. Palin, said even she did not know entirely what to expect from the e-mails.
Sharon Leighow, a spokeswoman for Governor Parnell -- and previously for Governor Palin -- said "the process was fair, we followed the law" in releasing the documents. She said a lawyer for Ms. Palin had reviewed the e-mails and did not request any redactions or that any of the documents be withheld from release.
The documents are to be released at 9 a.m. Alaska time on Friday -- 1 p.m. in New York -- and some news organizations are setting up elaborate systems for scanning them and inviting the public to help search them online.
MSNBC.com, ProPublica and Mother Jones magazine are working with a research company to create an online database of the documents. The company, Crivella West, created a similar database last year when the state released a much smaller set of documents related to the involvement of Ms. Palin's husband, Todd, with state government.
The company has not said when exactly its new database will be ready. "But it'll be as fast as anybody can do it," said Richard Ekstrom, the company's chief operating officer.
The New York Times and other news organizations intend to assemble their own searchable online databases of the documents, and some, including The Times, were asking readers Thursday to help reporters sift through the voluminous correspondence in the coming days.
The e-mails being released come from the beginning of Ms. Palin's administration, from December 2006 through September 2008, about a month after she joined Mr. McCain on the campaign trail and as national scrutiny of her tumultuous time as governor became increasingly intense. Ms. Palin frequently used her personal e-mail account to discuss state business, including with her husband, and those e-mails have been determined to be public record.
The approximately 3,000 e-mails relating to the governmental interactions of Mr. Palin, which the state released last year on a request from NBC News, added to an existing image of him as deeply engaged in state business, involving himself in a judicial appointment, checking on labor talks and weighing in on state board appointments, among other things.
Late last month another batch of e-mails was made public by way of a tell-all book by a disgruntled aide, Frank Bailey, a former confidant and former state director of boards and commissions.
The book, "Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin," relies on thousands of e-mails between Mr. Bailey and the Palins to paint a starkly negative portrait.
The book asserts that Ms. Palin improperly coordinated an advertisement made on her behalf in 2006 by an outside group, the Republican Governors Association, and that she and her husband were far more involved in the controversial pressure campaign to fire a state trooper -- who had been through a bitter divorce with Ms. Palin's sister -- than they had let on.
Mr. Bailey was deeply involved in that pressure campaign and was put on leave after he was caught on tape pressing a lieutenant on why the trooper was still on the job given the Palins' concerns about him.
Ms. Palin's aides have dismissed Mr. Bailey's book as a work of fiction by a former staff member with an ax to grind. The Alaska attorney general is investigating whether Mr. Bailey's use of the e-mails in the book violates state ethics laws.
The legislative session is over here in Juneau, and the city has made its annual shift to tourist season, when giant cruise ships line up in Gastineau Channel and thousands of passengers debark into rows of shops by the docks.
When told of the e-mail release, one of those tourists, Stephanie Stein, said, "I love Sarah Palin." She added: "But is it really going to be that exciting? Is it relevant?"